[terminalshort]

I can't stand this "influencing elections" nonsense. It's a term meant to mislead with connotations of manipulating the voting tabulation when what is actually going on is influencing people to vote the way you want them to, which is perfectly legal and must always be legal in a functioning democracy.

[adamors]

It’s so perfectly legal that other nation states can do it for you and you might end up with a winner that people didn’t even hear about before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...

[terminalshort]

Who are these "people" that you claim never heard of him before? Kind of sounds like BS to me because, you know, he won the election...

[debugnik]

Won the election here means 22.94% of the vote, not long after having polled at 5%. He didn't even have a party.

This person went really quickly from unknown to anyone not into politics, to incredibly popular within a targeted media bubble and still unknown to anyone unfamiliar with that bubble.

[terminalshort]

When that "bubble" is at minimum one quarter of the country, maybe you need to reconsider who is in the bubble here.

[tpm]

it's not "at minimum one quarter of the country", the turnout was 52.56% of registered voters, so its at minimum 22.94% of 52.56% of 18 million, which is 11% of the total population of Romania.

[pms]

It's obviously not about "manipulating the voting tabulation". Influencing people to vote the way you want them to is fine as long as it's not based on deceit. Is this what you can't stand?

[terminalshort]

I hate it because I have never seen it used any other way than if my side does it, it's "campaigning," and when the other side does it, it's "influencing elections."

[pms]

Agreed that's inconsistent and not ok. We need rules, procedures, and systems that apply equally to different sides.